Law and Rights: The Rule of Law in the Age of Globalization

The weakening of national identities and the increasing power of multinational corporations have turned Hobbes's Leviathan into a lame beast, incapable of protecting the rights of individuals against either public or private power. Emilio Santoro offers a sophisticated historical and theoretical account of the development and the decline of traditional conceptions of the rule of law. He argues that the requirement that rights should be defended against power remains forceful, but that in an age of globalization the most insidious danger is not from the state but from private power. The role of the judge, as the 'closing valve' of the rule of law remains critical and, Santoro claims, has interesting potential for bringing us beyond the old-fashioned rule of law, while preserving some of the basic requirements that it embodied.